


Name

by LadyProto



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Banter, Blood and Violence, Canon Compliant, Canon Typical Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Chorus Captains, Cultural Difference, Depersonlization, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Food Issues, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, I WOULD SUCK THE DIRECTORS DICK FOR A COMMENT, Jemmons, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Military Backstory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Team Bonding, Threats of Violence, War, Worldbuilding, backstory for Simmons and Chorus, canon typical banter, canon typical cursing, chorus, hints of past child abuse, injuries, planet chorus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-06-07 13:16:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15219962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyProto/pseuds/LadyProto
Summary: They contain meaning. They define who we are.And this is who we are. A product of war





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> AN: medical information is as accurate as I could make it, based on my knowledge as a 21 century neuroscientist. Military information is based on what little information my Vietnam Vet dad would tell me. 
> 
> Thanks to Kayla for encouraging me. 
> 
> Dedicated to my father, though he will never know nor read this.

The seconds after battle were a whisper. There was collective silence of held breaths as the last gunshot echo faded out. Before the survivors made their stand, before the stirred-up sand settled, Simmons allowed himself to feel a deceptive peace. The world had disappeared into billowing clouds of dust and gunpowder. The bellows that mimicked his diaphragm stilled; the gears in his chest ceased their clicking and turning. At the top of his breath, there was stillness. 

And then the exhale.

The screaming, the adrenaline, the pain, the scurrying to find comrades in the aftermath. This was the otherside of the storm. The Chorus soldiers were young, too young to make sense of actual battle. There was a clattering of rosary beads, pleas for forgiveness, fearful crying. The shadowed figures of survivors as they pulled themselves out from the trenches, trying to drag themselves towards their commanders even with their missing limbs. Through their helmet radios, the casualty count crackled in. 

"Green Team has soldiers down! Radio med bay!" Tucker barked out. “Kids’ missing a fucking leg over here!”

“Gold has injuries too.” Grif radioed in, the gravity of the situation causing him to not argue colors.

“Uh, yeah, we’re gonna need some help over here.....” Caboose lisped through the headset.

Simmons’s stomach flipped as role reversed. Instead of trying to usher in death, the soldiers fought for life. Several shades of red looked up to him for protection, their eyes wide with immaturity and fear. A dozen little girls with too-big helmets all reached for him, disobeying their training and making panicked grasps at his armor. They needed their captain, their leader, their hero who had faced the UNSC head on. But all he could do was herd them behind his armored body. 

_Charlatan. Dirt bag. Failure._

It shouldn't have ended like this. It was a standard hit and run, one that had been rehearsed and strategized for days. _Objective: Demoralize the Feds by threatening their quality of life -- moral high-ground be damned. Order: Take out the food truck that delivers into the Capitol, do whatever is needed to the driver. _In one strike, the Rebels could resupply themselves and weaken the enemy.__

But something had gone wrong. It had been a trap. Nothing could be simple for him, could it? Nearly a hundred well-armed enemy soldiers had greeted them with high power rifles and armor-piercing grenades. 

If he had just thought a little deeper, been a little smarter -- No. It didn’t matter now. This wasn’t about him. Simmons turned away from the chaos, taking stock of the garish remains of his troops. Teenage girls with thousand yard stares nursed their wounds with makeshift bandages. Their hands were too small to apply pressure to such gaping wounds, so the young soldiers watched in horror as their blood flowed through their glitter-painted fingers. The rebel’s armored suits were old. The capitols guns were new. They never stood a chance. 

Simmons counted the injured and the realization sat in. He was missing one. He had went in with seven girls, all in shades of red, all following his lead with blind trust. _Pink. Crimson. Scarlet._ Precious monochrome ignorance. _Ruby. Salmon. Vermilion._ They had trusted him. He failed. _Red. Burgundy._

_Burgundy. Jensen._

"Where's Jensen?" Simmons's breathing hitched. The small gasp caused the dust to seep through his ventilator, coating his throat and teeth with gritty dryness. "What the fuck happened to Jensen?" 

The girls quietly murmured to themselves, too shell-shocked to be coherent. No one answered. Maybe no one knew. Guilt began to creep into Simmon’s chest. 

__

__

Through the radio, Kimball's voice barked out the next order. There was no time for guilt. Evacuate. Now. “The feds have called for backup. Pull your teams out now! Go! Go go!” 

Around Simmons, the world began to move. Tires screeched as transport trucks lined up. Their cavernous maws opened as soldiers piled together their wounded. The last few medics obeyed their orders and stumbled their way across rocky terrain, leaving the remaining weakened soldiers to exhale their last death rattles alone. Simmons glanced behind him for a millisecond to see his old comrades, each fulfilling their role as Captains. Caboose lifted each of the injured into the transport truck as if they weighed nothing. Tucker, a born leader, echoed Kimball's orders from the top of a med van. Grif was the only one not loading up. Instead, he stayed behind ushering the last few stragglers to safety. 

Jensen was just another body to them, another casualty. But to Simmons, it was personal. That was his team, his failure, his shortcomings. His soldier. His girl. Organic heart tissue pounded against his metal rib cage as Simmons tried to make contact. 

"Jensen, answer your fucking radio!" He commanded through the headpiece, pressing two fingers against his helmet. 

No answer. Maybe her helmet was missing. Maybe her throat was crushed. Maybe she was dead. 

It was all his fault, no contest. 

There was no alternative. He wouldn’t fail. Not his team, not himself, not Sarge, or his father on earth. Simmons pushed his team towards the other three Captains. He would go after Jensen. He touched the radio on his helmet. "Command, this is Red Team, we have multiple injuries and a MIA. Send medical for the remaining. I'm going to retrieve the MIA.” 

He had already started towards the scene of battle when the response crackled through. It was Felix. The authority in his voice was unquestionable even as the shoddy, salvaged radios warped his voice. “Negative. Feds have called backup. Pull out with the remaining.” 

“What?” Simmons boots kicked up eddies of dust as his body and mind pulled him in different directions. They had never left a man behind. Fuck, the metal in his skin testified to how far his team would go to keep each other alive. “But we can’t just leave-“ 

“That’s an order, Red Team.” 

Simmons wavered. Orders. He thought of Sarge. Of Grif and Donut being berated in Blood Gulch. He thought of himself. Of relative age and incompetence. He had never disobeyed an order. Simmons could easily turn on his heels and flee with the others, leaving her alone to die. He would just be obeying orders. _Nuremberg. Befehl ist befehl._ His mind played through the scenarios of what to do, quickly sliding through screenshots of possible outcomes. It wasn’t rational; just an electrifying panic running through his synapses in a primitive fight or flight.

He had been ordered to protect and direct the Red Team first and foremost. Fuck the the new orders blaring in his ears. 

He couldn’t leave Jensen, he just fucking couldn’t. It wasn’t a selfless reason like heroism or preservation of life, but guilt. He was full of guilt for having these kids follow him into hell and not being able to bring them all back. A whine went through his head, coming out as a hiss between his metal jaws. It was a mere animalistic reaction: selfish, aggressive and unthinking.

Decisions made on impulse were either stemmed from desperation or foolishness. He wasn’t sure which one caused him to radio in once more. 

“Negative. I'm going after Jensen." 


	2. Principle IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Principal IV -- Orders of superior does not relieve a soldier from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him._

Simmons looked over the strip of land that had begun to return to its stillness. It was all dirt and dust, hard baked under the unrelenting sun. It had been a prairie meadow once, or so he’d been told, full of timid purple flowers and intricate queens-anne's-lace. But now it struggled to even make the gnarled shrubs grow. 

There was no place for Jensen to hide. She was either face down alongside the other bodies or behind one of the scraggly rock outcropping, burnt into crispy chorus fried pieces among the remains of detonated bombs and grenades. The more he stalled, the more scenarios his brain cooked up. 

He’d wanted his own platoon, and now, his first command had been a failure.

His failure.

He was a failure. 

_Failure._

"Fuuuuuck." He threw down his arms and sprinted into the hazy-afterglow of battle. He didn’t even know where he was running. Just somewhere, somewhere closer to Jensen and further away from his orders. The half buried landmines blinked their warnings. Friend or foe, it would make no difference. Death happened here.

What he saw first were the decals of her armor — a lively bright red against the barren landscape. Behind the rocky outcropping, he found her. She had managed to pack herself into the smallest space possible with her knees shoved against her chest and her head down on her knees.

"Jensen!" His boot crushed down beside of her hip, kicking dust into the small trickle of blood beside her until it became a morbid sludge. Her tensed form suggested she was alive, but she still didn’t answer, even though he was standing right over her. Dread evaporated from his body, only to be replaced by anger that boiled into his stomach. God, he wanted to shake her. He wanted to pluck her from the ground, check her breathing and vitals and then shake her until his arms gave out. He had just fucked up everything he ever knew about obedience because of her so the least she could do was answer him to his face. "Would you answer your fucking radio when I’m talking to you? You're AWOL while the rest of your team is in fucking pieces!"

Just ase reached down to shake her, she collapsed. The decals on her armor turned to liquid in his palm. Blood, and god there was so much. In the moment, it was the only thing he could focus on. The heat in his hand, the bright splotches disappearing against the red of his chest plate. He could be faced with a thousand casualties in a thousand wars, but nothing would ever ease the primal reaction to open wounds. 

He tried to remember the field guide he had studied all so long ago. Memorization, the one thing he was good at. It didn’t matter though. Time limits. Red team boot camp. They all point to him being a failure. He was average on the best of days but he remembered the basics: open airway, control bleeding, prevent shock, nurture the living, care for the wounded, and honor the dead. No matter way, say their name. Soldiers are people. They all have names.

What was her name?

“Jensen, I-“ Jensen, the soldier. But what was her first name, the name of the girl bleeding out in his arms? He had read the names of all the girls on his infantry roster, but never absorbed them as anything other than words on the page. Each given a number like the rifles they carried. 

Equipment. Inconsequential. 

Simmons slid his hands under the back of her knees and lifted her in a type of bridal carry. Weak from blood loss, her only movement was to curl her fingertips into the plating of his armor. The rest of her sagged like deadweight in his arms. Another mistake. Another fuck up. He had to fix this. For the lack of any real direction, he started towards the place the trucks had been before evac. He could walk back to the rebel compound if need be, but Jensen wouldn’t last that long. He glanced around, looking for someone he could call to for help. But in the end, it was just him and her. 

Back in Blood Gulch, the most he had to worry about was trying to take a piss without getting sniped. Not that Church could have hit him anyways, but he could have hit other bits of him. Getting shot in the dick was more preferable than being responsible for someone’s death, and she would undoubtedly die if he continued to swim in his indecision. He stopped his thoughts and ran. 

The loose sand and dirt shifted underneath him. Visibility fell to 100 meters as he choked on what his helmet couldn’t filter. Jensen’s body shook violently with every step. Somewhere in the distance the vague outline of an army truck began to materialize. The trucks were still there — one of them anyway. Another deserter like him. The orange armored blob stood out against the khaki and olive army truck

“Grif! Grif is that you?” Any other time Simmons would have cursed finding lazy-ass Grif instead of someone actually useful, but right now that rotten orange was his favorite color. “Oh thank god, I’ve never been so happy to see your ugly face!”

“The guy I got it from wasn’t exactly a looker.” Grif has his back turned as he tended to the small army truck. It was the same standard Jeep set-up that would have been common 50 years ago. Light, off-road capable, rough ride but fast as hell. 

Three soldiers, their ages and rank unknown under their armor, were already packed into the back seats meant for two. Grif half dismounted the truck, leaving one leg still in the vehicle as he turned toward Simmons. “Christ dude, what the fuck happened to her?”

“I-I don’t know! I found her this way!” High pitched syllables tumbled out of Simmon’s mouth as he tried to explain. “Why are you still here? Why didn’t you evac with the others?”

“Oow, her too?” Grif whined, as if casualties were on the same level of mild annoyance as ingrown toenails. Mildly irritating but utterly expected for military personal. “I’ve already got a truck load.”

Simmons attempted to push past Grif. “Well move your fatass over, you got two more. Now hurry up let’s go.” 

Grif spread his big arms to stop him. Jensen’s legs dangled at the sudden stop. “Uh, no. Felix’s evac order left a bunch of kids still alive out there.”

“Are you crazy!? They’re sending in a second wave!” He doesn’t add since when do you care? Since when did either of them care? The insanity of staying under active enemy fire reminded him uncomfortably of Sarge.

“Allegedly.” Grif started. “We’ve been here for how long and nothing-“

A shot pinged inches away from Simmons’s leg, almost cartoonishly ricocheting off the truck and into Simmons’s metal arm. Simmons screamed, higher pitched than he’d like, as he scrambled into the truck. “They’re going to allege us to death! GO!”

Grif jumped into the driver’s seat, engaging the clutch and gas in smooth solid motions. “Fuck! Snipers!?” 

“They must have taken lessons from Church.” Regardless of the bad aim, Simmons still pressed his body close to Jensen as she laid in the front seat. “Grif, what’s our exit strategy?” 

“Our _what?”_

“Oh god we’re all going to die!”

“Our plan is to be faster than they can aim!” Gears bit. The truck lurched. The kids in the back rattled against one another like macabre maracas. Grif cut the wheel, as gunfire peppered the spot they had just vacated. “Protect the wounded and hold on!”

“Hold on to wha—“ Simmons screeched. Grif laughed and they were off.


	3. Two Rules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“There are certain rules about war. Rule number one is young men die. And rule number two is that good men can't change rule number one." --M*A*S*H, Season 1_

“Dude, go!” Grif expertly braked and cut the wheel at the same time. Gravel pepper the Rebel’s med tent as the tires screeched to a stop. “Take her where she needs to go, I’ll be right behind you.”

“What about them?” Simmons motioned to the three other soldiers in the back of the van. There were two in stark white and one with Tucker’s teal stripes. More injuries. More kids left to die. 

“They’re still moving. She’s not. Go!”

Simmons lifted Jensen out of the vehicle as gently as he could manage. Her helmet had fallen off during Grif’s mad drive back to base. Without it, Simmons could see her eyes rolled back into her head in a white veil of unconsciousness. She was young, like most of the rebels were. Her cheeks were still plump and freckled, her hair in twin braids. War didn’t discriminate however. Multiple bullet holes were peppered across her armor, though he couldn’t tell if any of them had penetrated beyond the plating. Her leg armor had been charred black from a close plasma shot.

He looked behind him once more to where Grif was unloading the remaining soldiers quickly and without fanfare. 

Jensen was officially Simmon’s charge. He would not let his team down again. With Jensen’s prone body laying in his arms, Simmons used his shoulder to part the medbay curtain. “Medic!” 

No one listened. He was late to the chaos. The drab-olive gray medical tent was the backdrop for a new battle. Every square inch of space in the makeshift hospital was brimming with soldiers facing death. Either fighting it or welcoming it -- it didn’t matter. Death was a familiar entity here.  
Overworked and stressed doctors yelled out split-second orders that would ultimately decide life or death. A cacophony of orders and codes that sounded like tribal drums. 

BIs! Felix ordered a FIDO. Standing room only. MIST? KIA. Individual lives left to acronyms. 

Simmons held Jensen a little closer, as if his hands could somehow keep her life inside of her small battered body. "Can I get some help here? I have an injured soldier." His words fell on deaf ears. He cleared his throat, summoning his captain persona. He squared his shoulders and stepped into the path of the nearest scurrying medical official, blocking her with his armored frame. “Medic.” He demanded.

The doctor didn’t look up at him. She had her hands out in front, forearms twisted away from her in the post doctor-scrub position to prevent contamination. "Unless you're a doctor or on the table, get out of my way. I’m needed in the OR.”

He tilted his visor downward to glare at the much shorter woman. It was the one thing about his awkward, gangly frame that served him well. “She’s injured.” He tried to growl, tried to sound stronger than he really was. He was a captain in name only, with all the confidence of a private. But situations like this demanded all of his faked authority

The doctor dismissed him, waving her hands las if the flick of her wrist would remove him from her presence. The water from her recent scrub speckled his visor. “So are the rest of these kids.”

“No, you don’t understand. You need to help her, now!” He interjected, his voice cracking indignantly, just like his captain facade. He cleared his throat and tried again, enunciating harshly and punctuating each word for emphasis. “She’s an injured soldier.”

“And I repeat: so are the rest of these kids, Captain.” The doctor all but rolled her eyes, more inconvenienced than impressed. The action seemed juvenile against her aging face.

“But you don’t understand!” His voice squeaked again. “You-“

The doctor cut off his words sharply. “No, you don’t understand. War is not as concentrated here as it is for you guys out at the front. We can't afford the same kind of fierce personal loyalties that you and this girl have with one another. Whoever bleeds the most gets first attention.” She mimicked his stance, squaring her toes against his. “I’ve got a kid with half a face bleeding out behind that door. Now get out of my med-bay before I have Felix and Kimball drag you out. Now is that something you understand?”

Her words cut through his facade, shattering his glass confidence. Simmons deflated, his shoulders slumped in submission as he nodded solemnly and stepped backwards, bowing his head to her authority. “She needs help…”

"And she'll get it.” The doctor assured, her voice softer now. With her round face framed by graying curly hair, she looked as if she could have been someone’s middle-aged mother. In another life, before the war, maybe she had been. “There are only so many of us, and I have to prioritize before ALL of them end up in the ground. I’ve got the med team coming. They'll stabilize her."

She sidestepped him, leaving Simmons to make sense of the medical ward that buzzed on around him. Medical personnel in standard purples and whites blurred by him like strands of color in extended-exposure photographs, always in the same collision course towards another patient. Wasn’t that how it always ended up? The world moved on, changed, shifted, but Simmons never really was apart of it. He was inconsequential.

In a sense, Jensen was the same. Her name had been forgotten by her Commanding Officer, her body relegated to the corner of the medward. Jensen was just another number to the fatigued medical team, just another patient in line for the upcoming 12 hour surgery marathon. She was inconsequential to the overall plan of every other person in that makeshift hospital. He held her a little tighter at the thought. 

She wasn’t inconsequential to him.

The med team came as promised -- if you could call it a medical team. It was nothing more than a group of mismatched, underfed kids with bleached aprons over camo fatigues. They didn’t even have a proper gurney for Jensen, just an old fashioned stick-and-cloth stretcher. It wasn’t meant for this kind of work, but then, neither were most of the people in this war. Only two of the four had any purple cross markings on them. The other two were just there as extra hands.

Simmons recognized the heavy lifter as one of the Blue team lieutenants, something Andersmith, a large, muscular kid with a booming voice and naive eyes. He must have been pulling double duty as soldier and heavy lifter for the med team. He was like Caboose in that way: so idealistic and energetic, more than ready to save everyone. Simmons felt even less comfortable at that comparison.

Andersmith came up to Simmons with outstretched arms, expecting Simmons to hand over Jensen willfully. But Simmons instinctively turned, keeping a shoulder between her and the kid with no medical experience.“We’ll take good care of her, Captain.” Andersmith prompted. The medics waited expectantly, looking up at him ready to deliver Jensen to pre-op. And to what end? She would lie in queue along with dozens of other waiting patients, most of which had less than a 50/50 shot of survival. Understaffed, overworked and poorly supplied -- those doctors may be willing and experienced but sometimes it wouldn’t be enough. What if it wasn’t enough for Jensen? The Fed’s guns and bombs were more efficient at bringing death than the rebel doctors were at preserving life. It wasn’t a very happy ending, but war wasn’t a movie.

“I’ve got her.” Simmons stated, sidestepping Andersmith and scooting the medics out of the way. He carefully lowered her onto the gurney. Her fingers curled into the space between Kevlar and metal plating of his armor. Her body curled trustingly towards his arms as he surrendered her to her fate.

He still had part of her weight in his arms when the medic team starts to pull away. Everything clashed together at once: their metaled limbs, her fingers in his chest plate, his arm under the small of her back. The medics started their prep on the run, snapping off pieces of her armor and diving for the Kevlar shears. Jensen’s dog tags jangled as they search for her blood type. A medic prepped her for an IV. They were shouting. Shock. Trauma. O negative. Stat. “But--,” Again, his words were lost to the chaos. Only Andersmith looks back, giving a salute. “We’ll take good care of her, Sir!”

And that was it. A life left up to a coin toss. 

Simmons was alone again. His arms felt weak and wobbly after cradling Jensen for so long, but it felt like something was missing now that he no longer held her. Without her, he had no reason to keep his head up or back strong. He rounded his shoulders back into their natural slump. With no objective to fulfill or superior to impress, his spine collapsed, and he curled quietly into himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta reader asked for me to put the meaning of the acronyms  
> Spelled out the medics are saying “Battles injuries! Felix ordered a Fuck It and Drive off. It’s standing room only out there!
> 
> MIST report is a report that gives  
> M – Mechanism of injury (mine, GSW, RPG, RTA, etc.given)  
> I – Type of Injury (found and or suspected)  
> S – Signs (pulse rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate)  
> T – Treatment given (morphine, tourniquet, etc.Example)
> 
> It doesn’t matter in the end because the one kid is labeled KIA --- killed in action.


	4. Simmons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to._

His mother had named him Richard -- the name of a tall, red-haired king that had once ruled their earthen home with a capable hand and broad sword. His grandmother had gifted him the name of his great-grandfather, the moniker of Thaddeus, from the patron saint killed by an axe for a dead god and a lost cause. The surname of Simmons was tacked on as an afterthought by a father just sober enough to scrawl the name on the birth certificate. With a sprinkle of holy water from the hospitals clergyman, he was introduced into the world as Richard Thaddeus Simmons, King of Lost Causes, from the lineage of blind faith and hopeless drunkenness.

If there was anything he could remember from his childhood, it was the sound of that name, sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted, but always drawn out like a curse. Dick Simmons, whispered by his mother in between the dropped consonants of brogue Irish Prayers, even as she offered him up as sacrifice to the vengeful god that was her husband's drunken rage. Dick Simmons was jeered like an insult between his classmates until it became synonymous with the antithesis of the ideal. Dick Simmons the pussy. Dick Simmons the nerd. Dick Simmons the faggot that goes home to his dark house and sits in his musty room reading stolen comics books to escape the sound of his name used as a taunt, a joke, a punchline. Dick Simmons shouted by his father above the shadowy static of a broken TV. The syllables slurred and clipped fast between his father's teeth, like the name was the most disgusting thing imaginable.

"Dick Simmons!"

Simmons jumped like a scared dog at the sound of his name. He pulled his limbs to his chest, making himself as small as his height would allow. "Ah, fuck! Grif!" he whined.  
Grif grinned, looking down over his own belly to where Simmons laid scrunched up on the medbay floor. Against the background of surgical masks and muted olive camo, Grif’s poofy ponytail and hawaiian shirt was jarring and vaguely surreal. He had a towel twisted around his shoulders and a bundle of clothes tucked under one arm. “I’ve been calling your name for a solid minute, dude. How long have you been doing that?” 

 

“Doing what? I’m not doing anything.” Simmons snapped, forcibly rounding his shoulders from their defensive position with a scowl. The adrenaline from the battle had finally faded and left his bones heavy and muscles wobbly. The mechanical bits of his arm stuttered where he had been nicked by the sniper bullet. Though it’s probably better than creaking to a stop with disrepair. He really needed maintenance.

“Your whole sulking and over-thinking thing. God, you used to do that shit in basic." The chuckle that followed was warm and familiar, despite the cloud of death around them. “Alright then, how long have you been sitting in a pool of blood?”

It took a moment for Grif's dry comment to register through the depersonalization. "H-huh?" Simmons lengthened his neck to look over the bulk of his chest plate. He had been inside of his own head so long that the blood had dripped from his armor into a puddle of blood beneath him. "Oh, oh god." He stiffly jerked his hands away from his sides, surrendering to the crime scene splayed across his body. Getting Jensen back from the desert had been his top priority. He hadn’t had time to notice that he both smelled and looked like death. “I don't really know.” Simmons answered helplessly. 

There was a gentle thwack against Simmon’s helmet as a poorly folded something landed on his head. The corner of an over-bleached towel draped over his visor, cutting yellowed wedges through his vision, bringing him back to reality. “Grif, what the fuck?”

"That's for the blood." Grif said with a matter-of-fact tone. “Felix said you were down here scaring the kids. Wasn’t expecting you to look this rough, though.” He stared disapprovingly with his mismatched eyes at the deeper puddles that had developed a skin of congealed blood. The liquid underneath shimmered in the low light. “I’m not cleaning that up.”

Simmons swiped the towel from his helmet. It had been through circulation so much that the rough terry-cloth loops caught onto the texture of his gloves and pulled the dried blood off in ugly brown flakes. Spots of still moist blood soaked into the raveling edges. He barely heard Grif talking.

“I went through your bunk and got a change of clothes by the way.” Grif attempted again to coax Simmons into an exchange. He unfolded the bundle with his slimmer arm -- the Simmons arm -- and unrolled a pair of well-worn camo pants and a faded regulation red shirt. They clashed against breezy bright colors of Grif’s civies.

"Are we supposed to be out of uniform?"

“I don’t know and why the hell would I care? Simmons, these people think we’re heroes and this hero has to air out his toes is all I’m saying.” Grif looked down at his sandals and wiggled his toes for emphasis. The left’s long pale digits wiggled differently that the tanner, sturdier side. Nerve damage. “Look, I dropped you off like hours ago. Battle’s over, Simmons. You served your nickel. Go to the bunk.” Grif waved his hand dismissively.

“I can’t.” Simmons started.

“Uh, yeah, you can.”

“No, I can’t!” Simmons shot back. Their inadequacy had caused these injuries. How could Grif disregard that so blatantly? “I mean -” He exhaled heavily, turning away from Grif to focus on the door to the makeshift OR. Jensen was behind that door somewhere, just beyond his reach. He should have demanded to stay with her. He should have never backed down. He should have stayed in his captain persona until they obeyed out of a combination of respect and fear. He should have sat by her and held her hand. Simmons didn’t have a lot to offer, but he would have tried for his team. “I’m waiting for Jensen.” He admitted his defeat. Despite his over thinking and obsessive replaying of scenarios, all he could do was wait. He wrung the towel between his hands.  
.  
Grif pursed his scarred lips the best he could manage and nodded slightly as if he understood. Grif lowered his voice so it was just a gentle hum that Simmons could barely hear behind his helmet. “She’s got you that fucked up, huh?”

“What else am I supposed to think? I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t know how she’s doing and I just saw a kid without a face, Grif, without a fucking face.” His head fell back against the wall behind him, causing his helmet to bounce lightly against the metal paneling. The joints in his neck where muscles met metal enhancements tugged against one another until there was a stretching ache against his spine. He didn‘t adjust to be more comfortable Instead, he just let it be while he studied the drape of the tent above him. Unlike the concrete bases in Blood Gulch where the battles were intended to go on indefinitely, everything here was collapsible with bendable frames and folding guts. It all had to be ready to shift and change -- This war was going to end soon, one way or the other. "How’d we fuck up that badly, Grif? I mean it was so fucking simple -- like basic training ops simple. So how’d we fuck it up?”

“Kimball's up there asking herself the same thing. Her team was decimated. It was like they were waiting for her specially.” There was a steady sound of sandals flopping as Grif moved closer.

Simmons groaned to himself. Death always seemed to follow them. “How's she handling it?”

“‘Bout the same as you. Felix is up there with her, though. That probably helps.”

Simmons finally tore his gaze from the ceiling towards Grif, where he leaned against the wall. He had moved beside Simmons, but didn’t challenge him with eye contact. From this angle Simmons could only see the intact parts of Grif’s face -- dark skin, dark eyes, and dark poofy hair. For a moment they existed like they did back at Blood Gulch: two partners killing time in a shoddy base, clashing like oil and water with their demeanors, but always attached at the hip like vodka and bad decisions.

“Yeah, it’s nice to not be alone.” Simmons whispered.

“Sorry, can’t hear you over your constant whining.” Grif turned away, smiling even as the other side of his face came into view. He was grotesque. His skin gnarled with contraction scars. None of the original Blood Gulch soldier had made it out unscathed, but Grif’s difigurment had been the worst. The part of the face that Simmons had lost had went to Grif — because of senility, lack of supplies, lack of medical care, for the experiment of it all. Who knew what all Project Freelancer had preordained? As it stood now, Simmons’s own pale Irish skin sliced into the top lequarter of Grif’s face, making rough ravines and puckers from poorly done stitches.

Grif had never been one to care. He came out of the disfiguring surgery asking for more oreos. He still stayed out of uniform as much as possible. Fuck helmets. Fuck people’s shocked whispers, and double fuck Sarge’s orders. Only Grif could wear his dishonor and mutilation like a badge. Simmons envied that a attitude a little.

“You’re a fucking disaster.” Simmons stated fondly.

“Glass houses, Simmons, glass houses.” Grif crumpled Simmons’s clothes into a ball and tossed them to the now mostly clean Simmons. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go to the mess hall. Coffee’s on me." He reached for Simmons’s hand and pulled him to his feet.

“It's not a commissary Grif, you don't pay for coffee."

"I know that. I'm lazy, not dumb. That's why I said it was on me.”


	5. Peace Meal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Or was it Piecemeal?_

Simmons woke up at 0500 hours. There was no bugle call here, noone to tell him to fall into rank. He made his bed with with taunt 45-degree angle hospital corners, even though Sarge was no longer there to bounce a quarter off the sheets. He took a three minute shower with compressed all-purpose soap, then shaved the one side of his face with the same lather. On days like these, it was easier to wake up when he thought of it as an order, because for Simmons it sure as hell wasn’t a “want”.

At least the toothbrushes had color to them. Some even had stickers of those cartoon bears that taught kids about manners, sharing, or just being kind to others. There were superheros mixed in the lot too. Simmons's was red with Iron Man. They had been looted from a dentistry office that had been shut down some years ago when the healthcare system tanked. Come to think of it, his bed had been pilfered too, the product of a raid on a bombed university. It was moments like this that he realized he wasn’t in an actual army, but a fierce and desperate resistance towards things he didn’t really understand. 

He splashed his face with ice-cold water, letting the moisture nest in the spaces of his mechanical bits. This would tighten them, cause him pain. Maybe that’s what he wanted. Passive self harm was the reason he had enlisted after all. His mind returned to the mechanical, methodical, impersonal. 

0600 hours. Breakfast. Another reminder that he was no longer in the actual UNSC military. No more filing in by squad number, no more 10 minute meals. As a captain, it was almost leisurely. Even if the rations were smaller, he at least had enough time to taste his meal and be satisfied. 

Uncharacteristically, Simmons was the last of the Captains to arrive at the mess tent. Stepping through the curtain flap he found his friends already buried deep in their respective neuroses. Grif had his hands full with two mugs and a tray piled high with sugary snacks. Tucker muttered to no one and paced. At first glance, it appeared that Caboose was staring into space, but a closer inspection showed he was moving his head back and forth to watch Tucker’s movements.

The mess tent was suspiciously empty. Besides the captains, there were just a few strangler soldiers picking through their reconstituted eggs. With such a poor turn out, they’d be eating these eggs for lunch too, just re-microwaved. Don't waste food, not when there was a shortage of everything on both sides. “Where is everyone?” Simmons asked as he sat down next to Caboose. 

Caboose took a moment to form the words. “Most of them said they were not hungry. Do you think they have tummy aches? I do not want to get the flu.”

“More like they lost their appetite after what happened yesterday.” Grif cut in. He plunked down a mug of something that vaguely resembled coffee and passed Simmons the other. “Here’s that coffee I owe ya. It’s not too bad if you drink between the grounds.”

Simmons nodded towards Grif’s full tray. “Glad to see it didn’t affect your appetite.”

“Cookies fix everything.”

“Even this?” He gestured vaguely at the nothingness.

Grif didn’t answer. He didn’t eat the cookies either. He used small over bleached dish towels and folds each one into a little parcel. Grif could be oddly neat at times when he cared about something.. Simmon’s just wished it wasn’t always food. 

For a moment Simmons sat, letting the heat from the thin ceramic mug transfer to his metal hand. The coffee was instant from the looks of it, or a cheap drip with a greasy film on top. Bitter, burnt, scalding -- it was the taste of crumbling lives and the caffeine used to fuel the upkeep. One sip and Simmons remembered the smell of bacon grease on his mom’s waitress uniform. It wasn’t comforting, but it was familiar. “Didn’t you guys bunk last night?”

Grif gave a little snort of indifference, but Caboose answered fully. “No, I decided to stay with Tucker. He’s been walking for a really long time,” He lowered his voice. “I have not told him he’s not actually going anywhere.”

Tucker’s muttering became louder. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” The other three exchanged glances, unsure of where he was directing his comment. “I sent them right out in the open. I’m such a stupid piece of shit!” Tucker snapped, stopping in mid pace to turn towards the others. “I really am! I’m an absolute--”

“Alright alright, calm the hell down.” Grif waved his hand dismissively. “No need to step out in front of the firing squad. Just get some chow and try to rest.”

Tucker’s voice raised a few octaves in frustration. “How can you even think about food at a time like this?”

Grif raised one eyebrow towards Tucker’s outburst as if he had just asked the dumbest question in the world. He began counting his fingers for emphasis. “Let’s see here. Pizza. Tacos. Garlic Bread-- hey look at this it's easy.”

Caboose continued in Grif’s stead. “Pancakes. Peanut butter sandwiches. Grilled cheese - Oh my god, it is easy! Come on, Tucker, burgers, fries, crickets-”

Grif cringed. “Crickets?” 

“Church let me eat them once. They are crunchy.”

“They do offer a good source of sustainable protein for food insecure populations.” Simmons offered.

Tucker took back the reins. “No one cares, dude! That’s not the point!” 

“Then what is the point, Tucker? What’s your reason for the all-nighter?” Grif’s frustration became more apparent. He was the only one that had ever lead a squad before. Not that his time in charge at Rats Nest was anything to win a metal, but he did seem to be the best at adjusting to the new rank. 

Tucker started his pacing once more. "Same reason as you."

Guilt. No one said it, but it hung heavy in the air. Their willingness, their experience, their technique -- it hadn’t been enough. How desperate was Chorus to try and turn some dumb kids from a box canyon into heroes? "How many did you lose?” Simmons asked gently.

“Three. One’s still in medbay.” Tucker became over-animated when he spoke of important things. Fidgety almost, the way he moved his shoulders or averted his eyes. He tried to pass it off as showy or masculine, but it just looked as if he kept moving so the guilt wouldn’t stick. “His name is Charles.” He said as if it was an afterthought. They all had names once, but now they were just labeled as casualties. 

"Palomo? I thought you hated that guy.” Grif remembered their names. Simmons envied Grif’s ability to be so human. 

"I do but, damn man. He's weak. He's stupid. He's super fucking annoying-"

"You’re starting to sound like Sarge." Grif muttered. 

"—But we were talking armor the other day and he told me he can still fit in kid’s clothes. He saw both his parents obliterated in front of him and said "Oh, that's just another day on Chorus. Sometimes people explode, sometimes they got shot and sometimes they have cake in the mess hall."

"That last part is pretty important." Grif said snidely. 

Tucker reached for one of the folding metal chairs and straddled it backwards. One by one, he locked eyes with the other Captains. “He’s fifteen." That was the important fact in all of this. The captains had all seen brutally, injury and death, but they had been adults -- legally at least. Most of these kids were still growing. Most of them would never get the chance to grow up. “He’s still got baby fat.”

“It’s a kids’ war.” Grif shook his head, undoubtedly thinking of Kai.

Simmons remembered the toothbrush, the beds, the destruction. “No, it’s everyone's war.”

“Someone can have my share. I don’t want it.” Caboose chimed in. He was nowhere near as stupid as people thought, and it was little moments of clarity like this that cemented it. No one wanted to be here. Him least of all. He probably still had memories of college acceptance letters still kicking around somewhere in his empty skull. 

“So what do we do now? Wash is still out there. Sarge and Donut too. Is this a game of getting more kids killed so we get what we want?” Tucker bit his lip, throwing his head back as if he were praying. “What does that makes us?”

“Sarge.” Grif stated firmly. “And I don't want a southern accent.”

Was Sarge that irrational though? The more Simmons thought about it, the more he was no longer sure. It had been six years since his deployment at Blood Gulch. He would like to say it was Church that made him crack, but truthfully, he had came in a little cracked. The war had just made him snap in a different way. Tex. Wyoming. The Meta — with every major upset, his limbic system had frayed. 

Sometimes, without warning, he could feel those scenes play out all over again. Flashes of armor in monochrome. Deep animalistic growls. His missing arm ached as if it was still made of flesh and bones. In the mess that followed, he had strove even harder to stay on routine. Routine was safe. Routine kept him from losing his other leg.

But if that was true, then what the hell had happened yesterday? They had followed orders, organized, planned. And for what? People died anyway. It was actually the crazy maneuver of running into active combat that had saved Jensen. Would going AWOL sooner have saved more? Killed more? 

As Simmons delved further into his own mind, he watched a few straggler kids meander in. Felix was there too, standing too close to one of Simmons's girls. Caboose limped towards the line again, ready to beg for extras, even if he wasn’t supposed to. Simmons was responsible for them— his side of the war, his team, his friends. 

Sarge may have had textbook examples of neuroses, psychoses and a few “-oses” that Simmons had never heard of, but at this point, it seemed the sanest reaction to battle fatigue.

A metal tray crashed beside him. Then a laugh in stereo. Simmons was pushed back into reality, where Felix eyed him with a wiry grin. Outside of his armor, He was a lot smaller than Simmons expected, given his physical prowess. He was a weed: prickly, troublesome, resilient. A thorn Simmons hadn’t figured out.

“What the fuck do you want?” Tucker growled. 

“Just wanted to check in and see how the living legends were holding up.” Despite not being wanted, Felix sat down, using his bony elbows to jab Simmons and Grif out of the way. Simmons yielded. Grif didn't. Tucker fumed. “Fucking spectacular debut you guys had. Though it looks like your special giant friend there managed to get a leg wound. Has he been to medbay yet or is he too dumb to know he got hit?”

“Caboose said he didn’t want help”. Grif scowled. “He’s got a right to say that. He’s part of the team, ya know.”

Felix pointed his fork to his head for emphasis. He did that with everything: forks, pens, guns. “A part of the team that played one too many scrimmages without his helmet, from the looks of it.”

Simmons studied Felix quietly for a moment. Trying to navigate his intentions was an exhausting game of cat and mouse, if the cat had access to machine guns and a kink for breaking bones. Felix stabbed his fork into his pile of sloppy, gummy pancakes. A glob of imitation syrup beaded on the corner of his mouth. He licked it off. Simmons felt sick for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Why did you tell us to pull out when we still had kids out there?”

Felix laughed, mouth still full. It was disgusting. The discomfort intensified. “Are you serious?” After meeting Simmons eyes, he laughed again. “Oh my god, you’re actually serious. We got what we needed so we left. Why did you two disobey orders? Not that I care, I just didn’t think you had it in you.” 

Simmons fell quiet. Disobeyed orders. Insubordination. Service members weren’t allowed to treat their superiors with disrespect. He questioned the meaning of respect. There were two, as far as he was concerned. A respect that meant to treat someone as a human being, and a respect that meant reverence. He thought of his dad, and how he had been conditioned to take his father’s word as law. This idea of respect was so strongly ingrained that as a young recruit, he had been the easiest to break. _Give superiors respect, in both forms._ But as he watched Felix point his fork around, slinging his half chewed food and drippy syrup on the table, Simmons felt neither form of respect. 

Tucker’s anger was stronger. He stood up with such force that the chair scrapped against the modular floor. “We got what we needed? What the hell was more important than their lives?”

“Uh, food, medical supplies, water—“ Felix kept eating. 

“We’re under a fucking waterfall!” Tucker shot back. 

“That’s contaminated with industrial waste, what’s your point Tucker?” Felix pointed the fork as if it were a gun. “Wins and losses. You really don’t get that do you?”

Tucker was utterly incredulous. He braced his arms against the table and leaned towards Felix until their foreheads were touching. “Do you know how many kids we lost out there?”

Felix made a hum of disinterested uncertainty. “Like twelve or something. Hey, you going to eat that?” He swiped a cookie from Grif’s tray before waiting for the answer.

“Hey, fuck you dude!” Grif stood up, his frame dwarfing them all. His height matched his width. The shadow he cast easily overtook them all. “We lost fifteen. And get your goddamn hands off of my cookie.”

Felix continued as if he didn’t notice. Or maybe he didn't care. “Fifteen's not that bad. Seen an entire colony wiped out more than a few times.” 

Grif slammed his palm down at the statement, but before a proper fight could break out, Caboose walked up with a stupid grin and tray full of odds and ends. Rubbery eggs, burnt toast, bits of fat — raw calories that a giant like him would need. Grif stepped down in his presence. No need to bring more chaos to someone with limited understanding. Grif was always good like that. 

The motion was not lost to Felix, who smiled wickedly as he pushed his tray away. “Real soft heart you’ve got there, Grif. Big buzz around the medbay about what you did. Said you came in like a bat out of hell. I support the drama, but gotta give ya a five out of ten on the execution.”

Drama wasn’t the word to describe insubordination. Felix had something else in his mind. Simmons locked eyes with Grif who seemed to have the same idea. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Tucker jumped in. “More importantly, you were at Med Bay? How are they? How’s Palomo?”

“What about my team? Are they okay?” Caboose nervously toyed with his fork.

“Most of them are awake. Missing a few arms and legs, but those are the lucky ones, am I right?” Felix finished his meal and stood. He had perfected the fast and ravenously hungry 10 minute meal of a life-long soldier. It had been ingrained, not endured. He had served somewhere dangerous. “Your girls awake too, Simmons.”

The sound of his own name jarred him out of his thoughts. “She-she is?” Simmons purposely mimicked Grif’s imposing position from earlier, but it just looked pathetic and forced.”Can I see her now?!”

Grif tugged Simmons back into a seated position. “At least eat first. What the hell are you going to do in there? Give her your other arm?” 

“I might.” Simmons answered without another thought. Regardless, he sat back down with crossed arms. 

Felix turned, interested at that thought. For once, he doesn’t run his mouth. His inquiry was cold and calculated. “Other arm? I thought it was just your face.”

Simmons felt the world narrow in on him. His amputations were part of his identity now, but moments like this, he felt like he was waking up to the mutilation all over again. Nothing would ever be as terrifying as looking at his face for the first time in that dusty mirror, where his single glowing eye illuminated all the sunken muscles and terrifying angles. He had a half a face: one eye, and one human cheek bone. The left side was supported by a metal cage that prevented the left side of his mouth from opening completely. 

He then rolled up his sleeve, without a word, without thinking, just a thought of being good and getting it over with. Everything from his left shoulder down had been replaced with a skeletal prosthesis. There was no silicone covers, no attempt to masquerade as human. Just metal bones and ball-and-socket joints. It was heavy and awkwardly weighted, even without the nick in the wire to fuck up his movements. He raised his gaze to see if Felix was satisfied with what he saw. 

“Wow, you’re are a real shit show.” Felix took his turn fixing his gaze on each of the four Captains. “All of you. You look like hell.”

The four shared several uncomfortable moments. Tucker tilted his head down, trying to keep the subtle green glow of his eyes from showing. He had came in with such beautiful brown eyes, the kind he said girls swooned for. Grif too looked away, turning his face to present only the tan of his original skin. Caboose said nothing, but chewed his toast into the shape a dinosaur. 

“And you’re the big heroes.” Felix sneered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, dad, for caring enough to talk to me about the start of a day in the military, even if you didn’t want to and even if you didn't know why I asked in the first place.


	6. Baker's Dozen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _From the former practice of adding an extra item to the dozen as a safeguard against penalties for short weights and measures._  
>   
> 
> _I.e A small gesture to make up for grievous and malicious shortcomings._

With Simmons in tow, Grif headed to the med bay.

“Yo. I’m back.” Grif threw back the tent-flap to the post-op. This allowed the much needed sun to filter into the dreary interior. It was much calmer than Triage, but somehow twice as depressing. In the emergency room he had seen wounds, but here he saw faces. A dozen or so injured soldiers were sleeping to pass the time, while the ones awake stared at nothing at all.There were no flowers, no cards, no privacy, just narrow beds lined perpendicularly against the walls . 

“Are we allowed in here?” Simmons worried as he observed the stiff, practical medical equipment. Between the undertone of bleach and Felix’s invasion questions, Simmons’ stomach began to churn. He tugged on Grif’s shoulder. “What if we get something dirty, or get someone sicker or-?

“Relax, I come here all the time.” He shrugged Simmon’s hand off before making his voice louder and cheerier. “Hey, Doctor Kore! You around?”

The kids that had been listless before now slowly stir into life. They turned towards Grif, their eyes lighting up in excitement. The doctor that admonished Simmons earlier turned from her place at the bedside of a patient. She too smiled, much warmer and kinder than Simmons remembered, though it was weak around the corners. “Good morning, Captain Grif.” 

Grif grinned lopsidedly as he made a small gesture to the people around him. “Full house, huh?”

“Another thirty-six hour day.” The bags under her eyes had darkened, and the curl of her ponytail had fallen flat. She must not had slept either. 

“I’m going to, uh, do my usual, is that okay?”

“No gum this time.” She stated, putting her hand up as a metaphorical stop sign. “Last time one of them blew a bubble and when it popped they all tried to dive for cover. Pulled their IVs out and everything.”

Simmons looked between them for some kind of understanding. Gum? Gifts? Even the familiarity between Grif and the doctor had made it seem as if Grif had been coming to this medbay more often than anyone had known. “What is she talking about?”

“Just shut up and help me.” Grif stuffed his meaty hands into his deep pockets and pulled out the cookies from earlier, each still wrapped in the small napkins. He gave half of the parcels to Simmons and nodded toward the left side of the room. “You take that side, I’ll take this side.”

“Wait, you didn’t take these for yourself?” Simmons looked down at the stack of cookies in his hand. They were over-baked, almost to the point of being a sugary hardtack. He couldn’t tell the difference between the burnt spots and chocolate chips. “You’re… you’re giving away food?”

“I said cookies make everything better. Didn’t say for who.” He grinned as he started to distribute the cookies. “As you were, ya’ll.” He stopped at the first bed, making a show of throwing the cookie behind his back and catching it again. It was circus-like and playful, a side of Grif that Simmons had never really seen before. In another bed, an injured kid smiled, her swollen face making the grin look exaggerated. The air lightened and suddenly there was chatter in the post-op again. Not the chaotic screams of yesterday, but genuine happiness in the form of stolen overbaked cookies. 

This was Grif’s way of making amends. Simmons watched as his comrade performed for the beds in front of him. A long time ago, they had called such a thing a moral injury. A psychiatric reaction moral compromises. Grif never wanted to fight. He lost his draft protection after he had dropped out of college. He went into war toting a gun in one hand and peace daisies in the other. Simmons had always assumed that Grif’s absences were due to him napping or hiding from responsibility, but in actuality he was trying to bring some kind of comfort to these kids. It was a poor attempt at making up for the hell the captains had caused through ineptitude, but it was still more than Simmons knew how to do. 

Simmons followed his lead. He approached the first bed, cookies in hand, and tried to think of something to say. One look at the curly brown hair and sparse facial hair and he realized he knew the kid in bed. “Are you… you’re the guy on Tucker’s team.”

“Hell yeah. Special Ops Agent. Charles Palomo. Boosh.” The kid made finger guns as he clicked his tongue. His leg was in a sling, but it didn’t seem to affect his perpetually good mood. His eyes were round and excited, possibly from the prospect of sweets, though Simmons suspected that could just be from the medication. 

Simmons handed Palomo the cookie with an awkward half-smile. His lips could only really work on the right side. “Tucker’s been worried about you.” 

“Aw. Tell my Captain.…” He trailed off into a dramatic pause. He stared into the distance and cryptically spoke. “Tell him… I’d do it all again.” He then snapped back to his bubbly persona. “That and that he’s gotta finish that story! We never got to the moral!”

“The what?”

“The moral, ya know, like ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?’ or ‘you can’t teach Madonna how to act? The moral. “

“....right.” Simmons looked into Palomo’s wild eyes and then called across the room. “Uh, doctor you might want to tone down the painkillers for this one.” Simmons pointed towards Palomo, who gave a goofy thumbs up. 

Across the room, Grif had his patients beginning to giggle. The happiness seemed to be coming from a different world, one that Simmons didn’t know how to join. With fuzzy detachment, he listened to Grif tell the story of Rat’s Nest. “It took three days.” Grif said. “Three motherfucking, dick-sucking, days without food or water for them to decide to bring out the firing squad.” He used hard vocabulary to hide the soft aching memories of what he told. “And that’s the irony. They were going to shoot us because they were out of ammo!” He didn’t add how he had pissed his pants when a bullet landed inches from his forehead or how SImmons had bargained with God. He didn’t mention Sarge, or death, or fear. A story like that in Grif’s hand was like DnD dice. He could put a fancy spin on it and make it dance. 

SImmons looked towards the next patient and then down the row of beds. He wasn’t sure he could hammer out more empty pleasantries from his social ineptness. When he swallowed, his throat felt as dry as it did in the desert. The feeling in his stomach began anew. He moved dumbly over to the second bed. He was used to letting others carry the conversation, but this kid wouldn't even look at him. This kid was as scared of Simmons as Simmons was of his own voice. “Hey there.” He retreated back to rehearsed pleasantries. “Do...do you want a cookie? It’s chocolate chip.” He thought of the questionable food from the cafeteria and added a caveat. “Or something close to it. Let’s not get into the specifics.” 

The unnamed kid’s eyes widened anda small hopeful smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. He was eighteen at most, with beautiful dark skin and a buzz cut that had grown out. When he reached his hand out to Simmons, his fingers were long and dainty. Perhaps he had been a piano player in another life. “Can I?” he spoke quietly, as if he wouldn’t dare ask. 

Simmons nodded, placing one in the kid’s cautiously outstretched hands. He then handed him a second one and motioned to other kid in the bed beside him. “This one’s for your buddy when he wakes up too, okay?”

The kid smiled, shyly, sweetly, and turned away again. With his head tilted back on the pillow, Simmons had a sudden flash of memory. This kid was one of the two that had been in stark white, one from the back of Grif’s getaway tuck. “Hey, I remember you. You’re that kid Grif brought back.” Simmons couldn't place a name to the face, nor could he remember who had kids in solid white armor. “Are you one of Kimball's team?” 

The kid jumped so hard that his IV’s tubes shuddered. His long fingers inadvertently crushed the cookie into a thousands crumbs. 

Before SImmons could question further, Grif swooped in for damage control. “Whoa, alright, I’ll take over.” He swiped all but a single cookie packet from Simmons outstretched hands. “You can keep that one for your girl.”

Bewildered at the sudden chain of events, Simons stepped beck, looking between Grif and the kid. There was something he wasn’t getting, which honestly wasn’t a new feeling. He bowed to the change of subject. Afterall, he had only come to check on the girls of Red Team. Simmons looked down the line of beds again. Now that the patients were more lively, Simmons could recognize most of the patients present. Three of his girls were injured, none dead, thankfully, but once again Jensen was nowhere to be found. “She’s not here. Felix said she was okay but I don’t see her. She’s not-,“ He found himself stuttering. He blamed it on the wiring. 

Grif waved his free hand dismissively. “Calm down and go ask the doctor.” He gave Simmons a gentle push between his shoulder blades. 

“Doctor— ah,” He squeaked at the push. He cleared his throat in showy fashion. “Dr. Kore, where is--,” He hesitated at the prospects of a name. He still drew a blank. “Where is Officer Cadet Jensen?”

“Ah, the pretty little thing you wrecked my OR for. She yours?” A raised eyebrow, a knowing smile. His antics in the emergency room had not been forgotten. 

“Yes.” Suddenly, he realized what he had just confirmed. The disruption of the hospital was the least embarrassing of the two. The room suddenly felt hot. 

The doctor’s smile said she noticed, but her lack of a comment said she was used to dealing with stuttering messes like him. “We keep some of our more special cases in the back. She’s behind the second curtain.”

“Special cases? Is she…?” Some fucking Captain he was. He couldn’t even finish a sentence without trailing off. His breath stuck in his lungs as he played with the motions of his knuckles. “Can I see her?”

The pause lasted a beat too long for Simmon’s anxiety. She must have noticed because she added. “She’s weak, but she’ll make it. Just need to keep a watch for certain things.” 

He didn’t understand the meaning of it, and the doctor had no intention of revealing more. He didn’t like not knowing. Everything about Chorus seemed to be operating under some hidden standards he didn’t quite know how to read. He followed the directions and opened the second curtain.

Jensen. She was alive. He hadn’t fucked up as badly as he thought. His relief was beyond words. She’s turned towards him, deep in her medicated sleep. He watched the gentle up and down of her chest, the occasional flutter of her eyelashes as she dreamed. He didn’t know if he should call out her or let her rest. But It didn’t matter. He exhaled hard, in one deep breath his muscles released the worried he had held on to for days. Simply seeing her had to made him feel so much better. 

She looked different now, as he supposed all soldiers do after their introduction to active combat. Weeks ago, when he had first met her, she had been all sunshine and engine grease. As the mechanics creeper had rolled out from underneath the army van, her generous grin had caused him to stutter. His half-human face had caused the same reaction in her. 

Sarge would have called her spunky. She wasn’t strong like Texas, or quick like Carolina. She wasn’t full of empty giggles like Grif’s sister. Jensen was forged from thin, invisible steel. Which was why it hurt so much to see her in this state. Her right arm had been completely immobilized in plaster, which was further stabilized by mummy-like wrappings to cover her bare chest. Perhaps this was what the doctor had meant by Jensen “needing privacy”.

He wished there was a way he could be closer to her, but with no chairs, he had to sit gingerly at the foot of her bed. Jensen hadn’t moved since Simmons had entered, he looked around for something to pass the time. The only thing of any note was Jensen’s medical files, hanging off the foot of the bed from a nondescript clipboard.

There was a moment of caution where he told himself not to look, but it was quickly replaced with curiosity and boredom. He set aside the cookie and read.  
__  
Name: Jensen. K. Cadet  
Height: Approx. 5’2”  
Blood type: O+  
Age: Approx. 18

She should have been studying for entrance exams. Why were any of these kids here? They were better suited toward throwing around baseballs after class than tossing grenades at each other. At least in school-yard games there would be a clear winner and loser. In war, there were just survivors. 

Then why did war attract anybody? There was always this unspoken bravado. Serve the planet, die for the cause, may the soldiers’ corpses be the symbol of honor and glory to the nation. But in the well-organized UNSC military, the truth of the matter was that soldiers died for literally nothing. The Red Army has been told that the Blues were traitors that had sided with the Covenant. The Blues had been told the same about the Reds. And thus entire legions of soldier had been duped into thinking their senseless deaths were for any purpose other than the brass’s personal gain and the destruction of others.

Even Simmons’s time in the Red Army wasn’t some noble idea of God and Country. The job market had tanked with the war. What else was he to do? A college degree was hardly worth the paper it was printed on. He couldn’t go back to the trailer park where his parents had wasted away from boredom and booze. At least this way he was making his self harm seem noble. What was it for, Jensen? What was the Rebellion about?

He kept reading to the MIST report. The handwriting looked like it was done by a toddler having a stroke. Even Caboose had better writing than this. Under mechanism of injury the scrawl was even worse. He looked at the initials. S I W? He couldn’t tell. It was marked out and the correction added: GSW.

Gunshot wounds. Major tissue trauma to the scapula and glenoid from a point-blank bullet wound. Powder burns. Close quarters. Underneath that the treatments included: In-body stem cell therapy. Liposome enclosed Wnts. Barbaric painkillers. Painful regret filled him with every word of the report. 

There’s a small whine as Jensen stirred. Simmons jumped to attention immediately. He leaned over her, too close, too excited. God he sucked at talking to girls. He didn’t know what to do, but he wanted to do something. But there was nothing he could think of to offer her comfort, there was nothing to make something like this “better.” At the very least, her eyes lit up a little when he drew near. “Jensen. Can you --,” He stuttered, unsure of what to ask. What came out was a stupid, pointless “Can you hear me?”

Maybe it was the medication they had her on to ease the pain, but she woke up slowly and reluctantly. Her eyes fluttered open, only to close again at the lamplight. She hummed a drowsy whine before asking for him. “Captain?”

“I’m here, I’m here.” He reassured her, but the words seemed hollow. He leaned back, looking at the ceiling as he tried to figure out what to say. He wanted to say sorry. Sorry for letting this happen, because this was his fault even if he didn’t pull the trigger. Sorry for the things that he couldn’t quite put into words. He took a moment and tried to figure out what to do. When he couldn’t think of anything, he decided to ask. “Can I do anything for you?”

Her lisp was strong and familiar. Her negative tone was not. “No, Captain, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me “Captain”, Jensen.” He didn’t add _‘because I don’t deserve it’._

She made no comment. Moments passed. Simmons watched as she tried to gather her bearings. Her green eyes roamed from left to right, taking in the stage-like drapes that isolated her from the other patients. Simmons knew that moment, the one where the kid died and a soldier was born. In a weird way it felt unreal, because the words offered always seemed scripted. She sighed in resignation. “I’m sorry, sir.” 

“For what?” More time passed. There was still no answer. He thought of his own first injury. It had been a stupid mistake. The recoil of his rifle had put a tiny fracture in his cheek bone. The injury was worse to his pride than to his body, but he had spent days sulking until Donut finally sat down beside him with an arsenal of fingernail polish in Red Team colors. Donut didn't pried, he didn’t speak, he just painted them both matching mani-pedis. _Action._ Simmons needed to learn to do instead of think. “Hey. I brought you something.”

Jensen bit her lip, trying to hold back the hopeful smile. She met his eyes. The world suddenly blossomed into something very green and intensely alive. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He mimicked her, albeit a bit awkwardly. He reached for her good hand and helped her sit up-right. The covers fell from her body. Her single bare shoulder was so thin and fragile compared to the bulky cast around her torso. He picked up the cookie from the bedside, unwrapped it, and handed it to her. “Can you eat?” 

“I don’t know.” She shook her head against the fog of painkillers. “I haven't had anything solid since I woke up.”

He started to retract his arm. “Maybe a cookie isn’t your best first meal then.”

She made a drowsy whine and a soft “mine” as she reached for the cookie in his hand. As she tried to take a bite he could hear the cookie snap. She swallowed hard with a grimace. 

“Not exactly gourmet, is it?” Now that was the girl he remembered. The person, not the soldier. Granted, he had never had the chance to observe her well, but her optimism had always been her dominant personality trait. He breathed out hard through his nostrils as his face relaxed. She was tired and a mess. But god, she was _trying_. He admired that.

She stifled a choking sound. “No, sir, it’s fine, I just ah…I’m not really a fan of crispy cookies. It’s-,“ she tried to find some positivity from the mess in front of her. The burnt crumbs scattered as she tried another bite. “You didn’t make this, right?“ 

“Fuck no. I know I can’t bake for shit.” 

“Thank god, cause this is terrible.” She offered a weak but genuine laugh. Regardless of its poor quality, it was a treat. She cautiously took another bite. “I think I just snapped my braces.”

“They used the smoke detector as a timer.” 

Another small giggle. It turned into a soft cough. “This is _so_ dry.”

“Oh!” Now that was something he could fix. He reached for the sweaty glass of water on her night stand and steadied the straw to her mouth. As she drank, he asked. “Would smaller bites help?” 

She tried to snap the cookie into smaller chunks with her one good hand. She had mechanics hands — strong and wide, but very nimble. “This would be easier if I wasn’t left handed.”

“Mm. Here.” He broke the cookie into smaller pieces, handing one out to her. “Maybe this will help.”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes were glued on his arm as if seeing it for the first time. The self consciousness that Felix had planted earlier began to surface once more. The metal of his fingers seemed impossibly bright against the drab olive blanket. He was aware of the crumbs that were lodged in his hinges. The slight lag from the bullet seemed more pronounced as he maded fine controlled movements. She had never been scared of him before, so why now? Why were her eyes so wide? She seemed to be staring at something inside the metal and wiring. Whatever she saw brought tears to her eyes. He pulled his sleeve down over his wrist as much as possible. “Jensen? Y'alright?”

She nodded even as the gentle sobs broke through. Her breathing became a shudder as she lost the battle against her tears. “I guess we match now.”

His heart twisted with the crack in her voice. He didn’t know that to do. He never knew what to do. He knew people liked hugs, but he didn’t know her well enough. She was still Jensen to him, so he did the most he felt he was allowed. He took his human hand and placed it over her small, shaking fist. “Hey now. You’re okay.” He was lying through his teeth. Nothing about this was okay, but he tried to keep his voice low and steady for her. “You kept your arm. You’re alive. You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry. Im sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. But I was just so _scared._ ” The words tumbled out, sometimes so clouded under the lisp and medication that he couldn’t pick apart the words. But really, she didn’t need words. Fear transcended languages and people, enemies or comrades. He squeezed her hand. He didn’t know what else to do. 

Jensen wouldn’t look at him. Why didn’t he know what to do? He thought of Grif and how great his was with his squad. He thought of Tucker and how well he knew Charles Palomo. Simmons closed his eyes and exhaled hard. God he wanted to know her better, but she wouldn’t even make eye contact, so he tried to comfort her from a distance. “Jensen. What the hell happened out there?”

Her breathing became labored. Tension grew in her face and limbs. Her eyes grew distant as she replayed her last attack. He gave her hand a firm squeeze. She centered back on him. Her eyes were impossibly green. “Nothing.” She lied. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I _failed.”_

The idea of failure hit close to home. “Oh.” He managed. A simple oh. The repetition of self-admonishment was something he knew too well. He spent several moments thinking of what to say. “The only thing you’re guilty of is being human.”

The tears began in earnest now. Whatever she said was lost.

He didn’t know what to do when there was a crying girl on his arm. “ Do -- you want to rest? Should I leave?”

“Uh, Captain. Sir. I -” She nodded, turning away. She clearly wanted nothing to do with him. “Yeah, I’m going to lie down for a bit. Would that be alright?” 

“Uh, oh! Uh.” His eyes scanned from left to right as he tried to find a good excuse to leave her bed. “I’ll just. Uh...sweet dreams! I mean, uh, good night!”

“Good night, Captain, sir.”

He was a captain again, not a person, not a friend. Just a rank in the chain of command. He nodded, solemnly, and squeezed her hand. Simmons had learned first hand that the adjustment after a traumatic injury could be a trauma all on its own. But Jensen seemed to be going through something different, something bigger. He wished he knew what it was and what he could do. He thought of flowers, cards, balloons. Cliche things from television dramas that had no place in a combat zone.

He left her room without a word and without knowing her name. 


	7. Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You know what a hero is? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he's somebody who's tired enough and cold enough and hungry enough not to give a damn._
> 
> _I don't give a damn._
> 
>  
> 
> _\--Hawkeye Pierce, M*A*S*H_

The hours crawled by. Grif had finished his story and headed out. Dr. Kore had been relieved by another, equally tired doctor. Tucker had came in for a few moments before making a transparent excuse to leave the misery. Medication. Meal time. Lights out. It was boring, nearly blasphemously so in comparison to the terror of a few days ago. 

Simmons had given Jensen her space, but he didn’t leave the hospital. It was his turn to wait out the night. Only he didn’t know what he was waiting for. Jensen was alive. She had kept her arm. Yeah, the healing would be rough, but she would be okay. So why did he want to stay and wait for her? Maybe it was the sense of suffering along side of her. Of course, a sleepless night was nothing compared to a broken arm, or those superficial burns around her legs, but it was a penance. 

He blamed his Catholic upbringing. 

He couldn’t get comfortable. One of the nurses had brought him a stackable metal-framed chair but the tattered fabric couldn’t support him. His legs were too long, and his knees were pushed up past his hips. His constant fidgeting to get comfortable only caused the rip in the chair to worsen. He was too heavy, too unevenly weighted. Maybe he should do like he had done at Blood Gulch and set up something on the floor.

God, those first few months he had to learn how to adapt to everything. He could shower, but he couldn’t be immersed long. He could move, but towards the end of the day, his left side would drag. He had lost three cots before he realized they could no longer support his uneven weight. Which wasn’t saying very much. He could barely support his own weight. Even though he had always been one to do the training drills when Sarge barked orders, the strength wasn’t always enough to support the rods and wires. He had adapted, mostly, but it had been a rough road. It wasn’t a weird thing about humanity or some comic book angst trope. He was disabled, and sometimes it sucked.

But he was a cyborg. And that was kind of cool. Sometimes his circuits buzzed like a cat’s purr, which was cool too, until Washington tried to pet him. That man really liked cats.

Simmons found himself caught in that carousel of thoughts again. Every idea, every notion, every event from his life was on repeat. It was easy to stay awake when he was like this. But at least he was treated to the musical silence of the sunrise. The eastern sky slowly filled with the soothing tones of wheat and lavender. The purity of scattered light filled the tent with a warm golden glow as the sleeping soldiers began to stir. Time marched onward. 

It wasn’t the Earthen sun, but it was still the signal of a new start. A day on Chorus was 25 hours, of which at least twelve were in darkness. Even in the summer months the nights were chilly and long. It was nothing like the blistering sands and perpetual daylight of Blood Gulch, where Simmons would find himself bored with the unchanging seasons. On Chorus, the timid warmth of dawn was brief, and therefore infinitely revered. 

Simmons breathed in. The bellows in his chest kicked. He was alive. 

The moment of peace didn’t last. The tent flap was suddenly pushed aside, rapidly illuminating the tent’s interior. Several of the injured soldiers began to groan as Tucker shouted. “Yo, Simmons! Grif said I’d find you here. What the hell are you doing, man? Didn’t you go to bunk?”

“That’s my line.” Simmons scowled. He swore that shouting must be a prerequisite for Blue Team. “What’s wrong?”

Tucker’s voice was obnoxiously high-pitched so early in the morning. “What’s wrong? We got a meeting, dude!” He opened his fists as if to mimic a light bulb turning on, and then as the reality hit him, he face palmed. “Aw shit, Kimball’s going to have my ass!”

Every joint in Simmons’s body crackled as he stretched and yawned. “Isn’t that your dream?” He giggled at his own joke. He found himself much funnier when sleep deprived. 

“I want hers! Not her to have mine!” Tucker paused, narrowing his eyes as he thought for a second. “Wait, lemme take that back -”

Simmons rolled his eyes. “Alright alright.” He tried to stall the inevitable. Tucker didn’t have a lot to worry about, but Simmons sure as hell expected to have his ass handed to him. Kimball had to know about the insubordination by now. It was all over camp. “Let me go to mess for coffee and I'll be right up.” 

“We can’t! There's no time!” Tucker pulled at Simmons human hand. His strength was more than his smaller stature advertised, but it still was not enough to move Simmons’s frame of muscle and metal. “Fuck, you need to go on a diet.”

“I’m _metal_ , genius.” Simmons stated, smugly satisfied by Tucker’s struggle. “No time? When’s the meeting?”

“Like ten minutes ago.”

“ _What!?_ Why didn’t you tell me!?” Simmons jumped to his feet causing Tucker to fall from the force of his own tugging. The nurses tried to hide their smiles. The soldiers giggled. Simmons panicked. Tardiness meant more verbal abuse in his mind.

“I _said_ we’d been searching for you!” Tucker said from the flat of his back. “It’s 0700, you’re always running laps at this time. What the fuck are you doing down here? You never break schedule!”

Simmons inadvertently looked over his shoulder at Jensen’s makeshift hospital room. “N-nothing!” He was quick to deny. He would almost stay back a moment to check on her, but he expected he was in enough trouble with Kimball as is was. He tried to ignore the churning in his stomach. “Let’s go!”

By the time they got to the meeting room, even Grif had beat them to attendance. He gave Simmons a solemn nod before turning back towards Kimball. She sat behind a metal desk, probably looted from an old office building. The desk was meticulously clean, even though every inch of space around her was stacked nearly floor to ceiling with papers. Paper had become a security measure. Data could always be recovered with the right tools, but paper could be burned at a moments notice. Simmons suspected there were matches hidden in the drawers. 

For once, Felix wasn’t with her and she wasn't in armor. 

No one was in armor. They were bare. The silence became heavy as uneasiness set in. Nervous eyes glanced down at their civies, which suddenly felt foolishly out of place. Simmons zeroed in on the wrinkles of his shirt. He and Tucker were both in last night’s fatigues. Grif’s decade-old band shirt had holes along the hem line. Caboose was wearing pilfered university sweats that were several inches too short around the ankles. They were all unwashed and unshaven. Out of uniform, as Sarge would say. Out of fucks, Grif would have responded. 

But there was no Sarge anymore, and Grif didn't sass when Kimball faced them all in turn. When she focused in on Simmons, he felt as if he were being cut open. Her eyes had the same polished shine and steel color of razor blades. Her hair was pulled back into a severe, tight bun. She was a General in her whole being, and her showcased authority sent Simmons into his childhood neuroses.

He grinded his teeth as he waited to be berated. With his head down, he invented more insults for himself as he waited for Kimball to decide her punishment. Insuborident. Stupid. Waste of oxygen. She couldn’t do anything to him. She wouldn’t. But the logic did little to calm the effects of childhood abuse. When Kimball called his name, he jumped. 

“Simmons.” Kimball called them to order. Professionally, she made note of everyone in the room. “Grif. Tucker. Caboose-”

“HERE!” Caboose excitedly held up his hand for attendance.

“Uh, what’s this about?” Grif narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah, have you found Wash?” Tucker anxiously chimed in. 

Kimball steepled her fingers. She took a deep breath and considered the motley crew in front of her for several tense moments. She pursed her lips as if she were laying the framework for a difficult question. “Unfortunately. We have not found your friends. And I would like to caution you that we may never find them if we don’t come to an understanding on how to function as a cohesive unit. So in the interest of both the upcoming battles and rescuing your friends, I need to ask you one question. Captains." She slammed the flat of her palm against the desk. Pens and pencils rolled to the floor. _“What the hell was that?!”_

“They had us totally outnumbered!” Tucker argued.

Caboose hung his head. “The test wasn’t what I studied for.”

“Intelligence wasn’t exactly reliable.” Simmons agreed.

Tucker pointed his finger in another direction. “And whose fault is that, Grif.” 

“Uh, Simmons’s.” Grif shifted the blame. “His volleyball chick was on intelligence.” 

“She had nothing to go on!” Simmons voice raised a couple of octaves.

“Yelling is the popular thing to do!” Caboose shouted above the hurled insults. 

“ _Captains.”_ Kimball used the strength of her voice in an attempted to call them to order. 

“—because Simmons can’t be in the real world for ten fucking minutes—“

“At least Ihave critical thinking skills, _Tucker.”_

“Captains!” Another palm to the table as she rose to her feet. The papers ruffled in response. 

The air bowed to her presence but the Captains did not. The four turned to her in one stiff synchronized movement and shouted in near unison at the outsider. _“What?!”_

“Oh my god.” Kimball sucked in air through her teeth. “I have never seen such an immature and unprofessional group of soldiers in the five years I’ve been running this base. This, this is just this petty bickering! This is childish! You behave in a manner ill-befitting for officers of your age and rank.” She shook her head, her mouth still open in disbelief. When she sat down, several strands of hair were out of place. “Oh my god” she repeated. “You are Captains in the military for god’s sakes.”

Caboose was quick to defend himself. “That’s not my fault!” 

“Yeah, none of us asked to be here.” Reminded Simmons, to which Tucker nodded vigorously in agreement. 

“It’s almost like we aren’t the heroes you’re looking for!” Grif challenged. “Felix dumped us here and you’re expecting us to go along with another civil war. Ever think I don’t want to be drafted again?”

“You're supposed to be the heroes.” Kimball gestured towards the four in front of her. “Heroes.” She repeated as if the word would somehow make the four of them into her idealistic fantasy. She’d probably imagined some kind of selfless martyrs. The kind to be filled with objective goodness that they would move worms off of hot sidewalks. Valor. Honor. Kindness. Her eyebrows became more intensely knotted as she faced the truth. The four in front of her had no such qualities. “The news stories said-.”

“Yeah, well the news stories lied.” Grif said flatly. “And it’s not like you’ve been transparent here.”

Simmons backed up Grif’s notion. “Yeah, why should we believe anything you say? We don’t even know what we’re fighting for.”

“You’re right.” She nodded her concession. “I shouldn’t expect you to take on this war as your own. You haven’t lived through what we have. I should at least make you better aware of the causes.” Kimballs voice changed into more scholarly tone as she descended into a well-rehearsed story. “The planet of Chorus was named because of so-called “singing” that was picked up by a UNSC deep space probe. The sounds were actually an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by plasma waves in the planet’s radiation belts.”

Simmons listened closely, but a side glance towards the others showed that they were rapidly losing interest. He couldn’t really blame them. Her deadpan voice made it seem as if she were reciting from note cards. Maybe this story was ingrained from early childhood education, or maybe even some type of national propaganda. He would bet it to be the latter, which only raised questions to how much of her story was objective fact. 

Kimball continued. “It started out subtle enough, I guess. Maybe it even made sense when this place was first colonized. There was a merit system in place. The more valuable your work was to society, the more merits you earned.”

“Sounds right to me.” Tucker stated. “I deserve way more respect and admiration than Grif and Simmons.”

“Eventually, as the colony developed its own economy, monetary incentives were brought into the picture, more important people earned more money. But it became cyclical. A person was assumed important if they had money. Alternatively, having no money meant a person was disposable.” She trailed off. She clearly had more to say, something personal. 

“Nice history lesson, lady, but what does that have to do with--”

Kimball kept talking despite Grif’s snark. “It extended down through generations, even to the children too young to understand. Children from the higher classes were put on golden pedestals while our children died from lack of basic health care and proper nutrition. Classism killed.” She grew distant, her eyes more gray and shadowed. “Even infants.”

An uncomfortable silence settled on the group. A true war story was never about war -- it was about the innocent bystanders: The little old ladies that watched as all their children were dragged away, the cripples that were the results of misplaced landmines, the infants left neglected from the lack of resources. Tucker avoided eye contact. Grif backed away slowly, hands in his pockets in a poor attempt to be casual. 

Awkward silence ensued. Caboose twisted his lips and looked up at the ceiling, Simmons could nearly see the words trying to form. “What does it all mean?” Caboose very gently asked.

Despite the redness of her eyes, Kimball’s words rang with determination. “It means that over the past 50 years, everything tanked. Kids had to dropout of school to support their families. So the education system was annihilated. There was no healthcare because no one could afford it. Food, water, shelter -- none of us had enough, even though the numbers said Chorus as a whole had excess. We watched the life expectancy drop 20 years in what seemed to be a blink of the eye.”

Simmons remembered the pilfered beds, the toothbrushes, the remnants of past lives. Piece by piece the war began to make more sense. His family had been working class at best. His mother had worked third shift at a diner a few blocks down from the trailer park. His father occasionally managed seasonal work in construction jobs building high-rise apartments for the UNSC elites. From the cracked window pane in his tiny bedroom, Simmons would measure the progress of those steel beams against the horizon. The envy had always had a back-note of animosity. It wasn’t fair then and it sure as hell wasn’t fair now. He understood.

Grif nodded his head towards the door. “Is that why we got kids out there?”

“You’ve met them?” Kimball questioned less with surprise and more out of curiosity. 

 

Tucker scoffed. “Met them? We _lead_ them.”

“Your soldiers aren’t children, Captains, they are capable young adults.”

“Bullshit!” Tucker exclaimed, to which Kimball made an exasperated sigh. “I got a fifteen year old down there!” 

“--and at the other compound I have a ten year old tending the garden and an eight year old collecting spent shells for brass. Those, Tucker, are children.”

He shook his head dramatically as if reeling from a hit. He let a small huff come out of his open mouth. As always, his instinct was to fight. “And then what? They turn 13 and you move them up to the front line? When’s the cut off point for this?”

“Sixteen, according to paperwork. But I suspect we’ve had quite a few lie about their ages.”

“That’s not an excuse!” Tucker stood closer to Kimball’s desk. His voice trilled up as he became more belligerent. “They shouldn’t be here at all! Why do you have kids in a war zone?”

“They’re here because they have no place else to go.” Kimball’s eye contact with Tucker was fierce. “If we didn’t we’d be just like the broken fucking system that made them orphans in the first place.”

The eye contact continued for several heated seconds. The air between them became and raw. Tucker broke first. “This is stupid.” Tucker muttered as he turned away. So much for that bravado. “Stupid fucking-”

Kimball composed herself. She smoothed the stray strands of hair behind her ears. “If you want to take them off of the front lines, then you will have to help us put an end to this fighting.” She stepped back into the role of General, her tone calm and sensible. The quickness of her change of tone was enough to cause whiplash. “Now, will you help us? Truly work together and see this as something bigger than yourselves? Tucker, I expected you of all people to be the most willing to protect the sons of Chorus.”

Tucker hissed. That wording was no accident. _Sons. “_ Fuck. How am I supposed to say no to that?”

Caboose nodded. “Can we try again? Sometimes I don’t-,“ A large pause as he tried to find the right words. “Sometimes, I don’t do good. I want to do good.”

Grif shrugged. “Fine. Me and Simmons_ are in too.”

Simmons squeaked. “Hey, I didn’t say anything!”

Kimball gave the smallest of smiles. It was polite, as if she were in a business meeting and not bargaining with people’s lives. But from her explanation of Chorus politics, maybe that line had been blurred for her years ago. “My soldiers look up to you. Felix looks up to you.”

Tucker snorted. “Yeah, whatever”. He turned away. “Can we go now? Like, say dismissed or whatever.”

“Tucker. Dismissed.” She said gently, to which Tucker only gave a frustrated huff. “Caboose, you too.”

“Bye, Principal Kimball!" Caboose waved furiously until Tucker grabbed his hand and began dragging him to the exit.

Grif and Simmons made eye contact with one another as they turned to leave. Tucker’s outburst had diverted the attention from them for now. Simmons sighed heavily with relief, but it was cut short my Kimball once again calling out to the group. “Simmons. Grif. You two need stay.”

Cue the panic attack. 

Simmons felt like a cluster of sparks in his stomach. He had to force himself to breath in. He makes make eye contact with Grif for a brief moment as they turn around in unison.

As soon as Tucker shut the door, Kimball stood. She made her way around the desk and further into their spaces. She trailed her fingertips along the desktop as she moved in front of the pair. “Richard. Dexter. Felix told me a fun story.”

Richard. The thing inside the uniform. The thing out in the open without its armor. 

Simmons fixated on the pistol in the hostler around her thigh, and kept his head down. In his peripheral he could just make out the way she leaned into a casual half-sit against the desk. She was trying to play it cool, which only made Simmons worry more. It was almost like Kimball was trying to play nice, and now he didn’t know where he stood. 

Grif must have noticed the change as well. He crossed his beefy arms and jutted out his chin to size up this outsider that dared use their first names. “Bet he tells some real good ones too.”

“Shut up, Grif!” Simmons squeaked, as he gritted his teeth. He willed Grif to stay silent so that it would be over quickly. He was being irrational. Stupid. Nothing was going to happen to him, but he still can’t calm the hell down. 

“So why don’t you tell me what happened?” Kimball’s tone was almost playful in its inflection. 

If it was self incrimination she wanted, then Simmons was willing to give it. “We were told to pull out. Second wave. Felix said it was direct orders from you, ma’am.” His eyes were still downcast. 

“We were told to. But we didn’t.” Grif challenged. “Direct orders from _Vanessa.”_

“He would have used Kimball. Or General. I know Felix. I know when he would use my first name.”

Simmons knotted his eyebrows and frowned at the worn floor beneath them. Did she just imply that Felix and her were…? He thought of Felix at breakfast, the sloppy pancakes. The feeling of being bitten into. The discomfort increased. He didn’t want to think about it. “We got as many as we could get in one truck before the snipers started.”

Grif continued to antagonize. “We saved them. So what’s your point, Vanessa?”

Simmons jumped as Kimballs worn hands came into view. She reached down, pulled the pistol from her leg holster and threw it on the desk. The force of the toss implied that she wished she could put it up for good. “I’m not heartless.” When Simmons dared to look up he was taken aback by how loose her posture had become. She was not relaxed but instead slumped with rounded shoulders. The woman in front of them now wasn’t the headstrong leader of a resistance. She was a tired woman, not terribly old, but with stress wrinkles regardless. Around her eyes were crow’s feet from her constant frowning. “I just wanted to know how many you saved?”

“Three.” Simmons answered timidly. “One was mine.”

“I knew the girls would be safe with you.” Her smile is weary. “And the others?”

“Mine.” Grif lied. Simmons glaced quickly to Grif’s stoney face. Those two soldiers in stark white where definitely not Grif’s, and apparently they weren’t Kimball’s either. How did they get two extra kids?

Kimball didn’t pick up on the dishonesty. She instead asked her most painful question. “How many did we leave behind?”

“I-” Simmons closed his eyes. Vividly, he saw each body he stepped over to get to Jensen. Each river of blood, each baby-face that had been replaced with torn muscle and blood. Jensen had been curled up in a puddle of her own blood next to a Fed kid with shitty luck. “I-I don’t know, Ma’am.”

Grif knew. Grif probably knew their names. “15 KIA. 3 MIA.” 

“Thank you.” She said softly. “I’m not supposed to tell you that, considering you went against military protocol, against direct orders and against me - as a person. But, I thank you.”

Vanessa nodded quietly to herself. She was past true sadness, perhaps past true happiness too. Simmons assumed that after a certain point, things get muddled. No one was happy that they had lost fifteen, but then they did manage to get three back. Alternatively, getting the three back didn’t make things right. Salvaging a small bit of rectitude form the waste didn’t make the obscenity correct. War was hell. But war was also filled with awful majesty. Everything swirled. Order blended into chaos. Vanessa blended in Kimball. “But seeing as I _am_ General, I cannot let you go without some form of punishment.” She turned her attention towards Grif. “Grif, I heard you like hanging around in the med bay. Is that true?”

Grif nodded. “It’s a good place to get away from all the orders around here.”

“And Simmons, you spent all night beside your soldier’s bedside, correct?”

He gave a short quick nod. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Your punishment then, is med bay duty. Lifting, cleaning, keeping morale high. Basically, you’ll be keeping the same schedule as you are now. But if anyone asks, you hate it. You're being punished. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nodded Simmons.

Grif shrugged. “Ya know, I don’t hate you as much as I thought I would.”


	8. 38 Across

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adjective, five letters
> 
>  
> 
> _As opposed to God or animals or machines, especially in being susceptible to weaknesses._
> 
>  
> 
> _Human_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a scientist. I make jokes about balls.

“I’ve been thinking.” Palomo declared upon being released from the makeshift hospital. In his week of bedrest, he had grown the slightest of whiskers. He scratched his chin to bring more attention to his peach fuzz. “I’ve been thinking a looong time.”

Tucker laughed. “Don’t hurt yourself, man.”

“I’m being serious here. There’s a definite point to that story you were telling, that one just before the Feds came in.” Palomo was much younger than the Captains, but he was tall enough that his large innocent eyes were level with Tucker’s when they spoke. “I just haven’t figured it out. What’s the moral?”

Tucker flickered his gaze to and from the floor before crossing his arms. “Fuck off, Palomo.”

Simmons blew air from his nostrils in an attempt not to laugh and continued his sweeping. It had been three days since he had been put on hospital duty, and in that time he had seen little bits of life come back to the camp. In the corner, Andersmith dealt a round of cards to anyone who would join in, pretending to take no notice of the younger ones cheating. Tucker kept the coffee flowing, just doing anything to keep himself moving. In between lifting boxes of medical supplies, Grif spun colorful stories about his childhood as a carnie. _“It’s so I have an excuse to not work.”_ Grif had promised to Simmons when he had called him out. _“That’s all it is. I just don’t want to work.”_

But Simmons wasn’t nearly as hands-on. He watched over all of his girls from a safe distance. Jensen was the only one that still remained in the hospital, though now the brace around her chest was gone. The only indication of her injuries was the bulky cast on her left arm. She had spent most of her time alone, lost in puzzle books or novels. He never bothered her, because what would he say? She was probably still sour at him for, well, for being him — That was to say for being incompetent to the point of allowing a massive bodily injury. So much for the heroic reputation.

Simmons gave a quick glance over to her makeshift room. The curtains were now open and she was sitting up on her own. Her oversized black shirt made her red hair stand out even more than normal. She chewed on the end of a cheap plastic pen and seemed lost in thought in her book of crossword puzzles.

Simmons was proud of her in a way. Jensen was a fighter, both physically and mentally. He was proud of himself too, though that pride glowed dimmer. She had brought out the heroic side of him. Maybe he could be a hero. Unlikely. But maybe. As he swept the same place over again, he let his thoughts wander to an idealized version of himself. Perhaps he could be the owner of an Elizabethan manor on sprawling grounds. He pictured himself in front of an old-world fireplace, standing with one elbow over the carved wooden mantle. As Grif walked by with his stack of boxes in his arms, Simmons fantasy expanded to having a man-servant that fetched him fine Irish whiskey on demand. Aged, of course, because the age of spirits somehow made the difference between “alcoholic” and “connoisseur.” He imagined oriental rugs and a distinct lack of chaos of any type. No metal, just freckled skin and a broader chest where he would wear his Purple Heart. A hero, a gentleman, a person of worth. 

It would be such a far cry from where he was now, in some dusty med tent, emptying bedpans, following orders. Simmons raised his gaze in order to steal another glance at Jensen, but, fuck -- he accidentally made eye contact. The intensity of her eyes made his hand go lax against the broom. His thoughts dissipated in static as they locked eyes. Had she been watching him? 

The world went green again, almost dizzying in its intensity. In a world already colored drab olive, it somehow felt more vast, more like the unpeopled rawness of virgin forests. His name was full and strange with her lisp. “Captain Simmons, you're from Earth right? What’s a Puma?” 

Before Simmons could choke out something coherent, Grif dropped the boxes he was carrying with a loud _“Fuck!”_

The resounding thud of boxes wasn’t enough to make Simmons look away. “A puma? What?”

In the background, Grif shook his head. “Oh, hell no.” He muttered as he walked out. “Dumbass fucking chupacabra-.” 

Jensen followed Grif’s exit with her eyes. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No. It’s, uh, something from a long time ago.” Simmons leaned the broom against the custodial cabinet and approached her cubicle. “A puma is like a big cat. You guys have house cats here on Chorus, right?”

Jensen made a hum of agreement before placing the pen against her mouth again. Her lips weren’t full, but there was something very soft about the way they turned down at the corners. “That doesn’t help with the question though.”

He tore his eyes away and studied the chewed cuticles of his human hand, absentmindedly picking at the wires in his metal arm. He didn’t move closer. “W-what’s the context?”

They were on even ground. His voice cracked, but Jensen’s every word was marked with a slur or lisp. “The original habitat of the puma.” She patted the book on her lap. “Thirty-eight across.”

“Mountain?” He offered. He had made it to the foot of her bed, where the curtains had once separated her from the world. He had never pressed on why she had been isolated, though now that and 100 other thoughts tumbled around in his head. Why did he have to be so fucking stupid? Why did he have to be entrusted with the girls? Low grade panic burned through his cheeks. He was an idiot. 

Jensen paid him no mind. She narrowed her eyes as she read to herself. “Two words. Mountain range?” She wetted her lips as she thought about it. The chicken scratch she made with her right hand was barely legible. “Yass!”

Her exuberance elicited a half-smile. “I never realized that you guys have no idea what it’s like back on earth.”

“-And you don’t know what it’s like here on Chorus.” She shot back, not thinking as she scanned the next word. She made a small gasp as she looked up sheepishly. “Oh! Uh, that is to say-you don’t know what Chorus is like, Sir?” Her nervous smile revealed the shine of metal braces on her upper teeth. 

“Uh…,“ His brain felt like it was buffering. Shit, maybe it actually was. He tried to stutter out something that a real captain would say. “.....at ease?” His awkwardness was annoying, where he found hers cute. “You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like for you guys. When I was a kid the War only affected us in terms of food rationing and those weird-ass propaganda posters.”

Jensen tilted her head back, eyeing him from a new angle. “You grew up in a war too?”

He nodded slightly. It wasn’t a secret. In fact, he had assumed she had known. It made him realize how isolated he had made himself with his faked captain persona. He had been given command of fifteen girls, but beyond their names and ranks, he knew nothing about them. They probably knew equally as little about him. But until now he had assumed it hadn’t mattered. “The Great War. But I wasn’t at the front like you are. An advanced civilization of extraterrestrials isn’t exactly into nuking Irish kids in trailer parks.” 

She mimicked his nod though her question implied she had no idea what he was talking about. “What’s Irish?”

“It’s, uh, it’s a,--It’s an ethnicity.” The disconnect between what he expected her to know and the questions she asked was jarring. He had never had to explain basic earth things before. He knew better, but he considered his experiences universal. “People who are from a certain country on earth called Ireland.” 

“Like someone from The Capitol is a Federalist?” 

“Yes..?” He ventured. He had no idea what that was. He knew the term Feds, but had no idea it could be a shortened, if not derogatory term for an entire person. He should have taken the time to understand that before killing several of them.

If she noticed his uncertainty, she didn’t mention it. “Are you Irish then?” The words came out as an awkward mess of spit and air due to her lisp. Jensen started to raise a self-conscious hand to hide her mouth, but lifted her unwieldy cast instead. Over-compensating the weight, she nailed herself across the face. “Ow!” Her head went back with the impact.

“Oh. Oh god.” Boots squeaked as he rushed closer. Before he could realize, his hands were in her hair, supporting her before she could crack her head into the metal bed frame. As soon as their proximity registered, the urge to jerk away settled in. He went to release her as soon as she steadied , but had forgotten about the effects of the stray bullet. The ball joints of his fingers stalled, the grabbing motion dragged several coifs of her hair under the metal rods. “I -- fuck!” 

“Captain, what are you --,” Jensen tried to turn her head to look, only to have several strands yanked from their roots. “Ow -- what?” She reached behind her, her fingers trailing along his arm. Eventually, their hands met around the mess of hair caught inside his ball joints. “Oh. Wow.”

“I’ll fix it, just --,” He trailed off as he started working on untwisting her from his robotics. With her head nearly touching his chest, he could almost feel her breath against his ragged shirt. His mind was blank, just focusing on the mechanics of it. This had to be over stepping some kind of boundary. He told himself to stop agonizing over the awkwardness, the proximity, the way her hair felt like silk --

“Well, are you?”

“W-what?” He exhaled the breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

“Are you Irish?”

“Oh.” He had nearly forgotten about that. Where as he was scared to incompetence in their closeness, she seemed relatively unchanged. Of course... why would a normal person be bothered by such closeness. Chain of command aside, there was this low-grade panic that burned in his cheeks whenever he saw a pretty girl. Like everything else, he pushed that thought into his mental box labeled ‘shitty childhood problems’. “No, my mother was.” He took several moments longer before revealing the second part of his heritage. “Dad is Dutch.”

“Is he from Dutchland?” Jensen’s voice trailed up cheerfully as she made the linguist connections. 

“The Netherlands.” His voice deepened into a distracted hum as he intensified his focus on her hair. He freed one of his fingers, protectively curling it away from her. He felt his knuckles lock into place.

“I’m from Two Keys!” She said excitedly. She nodded. His hand went with her.

He let out a vague sound of agreement, even if her words were meaningless to him. His time on the planet had only been under the context of war. A war that, until a few days ago, he had not even bothered to understand. It wasn’t his fight, per se, even if he did indeed do the killing. The rebels had land they wanted to protect. Simmons just wanted his friends back. One means, to two very different ends. “What was it like?”

“It was on the outskirts of Lander’s Valley. Do you know it?” She didn’t wait for him to give the answer she already knew was coming. “It was just farmland out that way. So much green and yellow that I could stand on my porch and just see blue for miles. We didn’t have much of a farm, but Dad made money fixing people’s tractors, I think.” 

Simmons managed to get his second finger untangled. There was just one more digit left before he could move on to the mess of a hinge that mimicked a carpometacarpal joint. “Sounds much different from Earth. Planet’s basically a shithole now. Two Keys sounds….nice?”Nice.Not Idyllic, or pleasant. Just nice. God, he was an idiot. “Is it nice?”

“Was. It doesn’t exists anymore.”

“Oh.” In the heavy silence that followed, Simmons became hyper aware of his hands, the way the vibrancy of her hair twisted over the dull scruffed metal of his fingers. It would have been curly, if she had had the luxury to care for it, but more often than not he had seen her with a loosely plaited braid, sometimes dipped in engine grease from mechanical parts he was too dumb to name. The fuzzy over-washed flyaways suddenly felt as if they had weight. He didn’t know what to say. Or if he should say anything. This was going to end like it did the last time he had tried to speak to her. All he did was upset her. But this time she was going to be stuck with him for several moments more as he continued on to the last tangle. 

Jensen broke the silence “You really don’t know us.” It was matter-of-fact, neither accusatory nor questioning. Of course, she had torn through bullshit for her entire life. This was no different. “Ms. Kimball said you were a hero. You aren’t, are you?”

“No.” Simmons exhaled deeply. How could anyone look at their mangled bodies and stunted mentalities and call them heroes? He finished untangling her hair, bending his frozen fingers back into place before gently moving her shoulders back so their eyes could meet. He took a hard look at her, trying to figure out what the fuck Kimball had meant by keeping up morale. “I’m just guy that decided military life was better than facing society. Another animal in the zoo as Sarge would say.”

“He’s one of your friends, right? The reason you’re helping us is because the Fed’s took him.” Her working hand made light scratches on the paper of her puzzle book. She ripped the page. “They take everything.”

“Hey, now.” He lowered his voice, carefully looking behind him and pulled up a chair to her bedside. “He can take care of himself. He was Red Team’s Sargent.” He realized she might not know much about the politics of red vs blue, or how strangely the ranks were classified, so he added, “He was my CO.”

She looked up from her lap. “What was- what is his name?”

“We just called him Sarge.”

“No, His name. Not like I’m Cadet Jensen or you’re Captain Simmons.” She drummed her fingers against her own cast. “A name! They exist before we’re born. Our parents name us before we’re born, right? And they are the only thing we don’t give up when we die. What is his _name?”_

Another cultural difference Simmons didn’t understand. “I….don’t actually know.” Simmons admitted. “He never liked to talk about it. Said that was for the civilians.” He tried to mimic Sarges gruff tone. “I ain’t been called by my first name since I was a boy playing tiddlywinks in the minefield.”

Jensen giggled, a small lightness returned to the ward. She laughed at his joke. Not him but his jokes. He repeated himself in the same tone to hear her laugh. Simmons laughed simply because she was laughing. Her braces shined with her giggles. “Why do military people do that? Why the last names?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. I haven’t been called by my first name in ages.” He found himself picking at his wires again. Then quietly, as an afterthought he added. “It doesn’t even feel like me at this point.”

“I get that. My real name never really fit in the first place. I’m just Katie now.”

“Katie.” Katie. Oh. Pieces of the puzzle clicked together. He had a sudden flash of Captain Flowers playing that god-awful song on his acoustic guitar. Maybe Katie by some naked lady band. Simmons had to shake the song out of his head. “My name --” He hesitated. He only gave a simplified version of his name as well. “My name is Dick. Which made high school a living hell.” 

She didn’t snicker. She actually looked concerned for him. “It’s universal, huh.” She opened her mouth and pointed to the rows of metal glued to her clenched teeth. “Also a living heck. But!” Her voice trilled upward. “I can change the bands one handed!”

“Have you had them that long?” 

She nodded. “My mom used dad’s life insurance money to fix my teeth but then we couldn’t afford to get the braces off. It’s been years and I’d absolutely _die_ to get them off.”

Simmons frowned at her word choice. “You’re the mechanic, isn’t that something you can do?”

“I don’t think I trust myself to put a drill in my mouth.” She made a small flailing motion to indicate her cast. But then, like flipping on a switch, her voice softened. “Especially now.”

“I don't like sticking a dill around my face either.” He pressed his fingers over the metal brace that served to support his once-broken jaw bone. As his eyes flickered to and from the floor, the whirr of his mechanical eye clicked audibly. “I won’t even let Grif touch my face unless I have to.”

“Do you need maintenance?” Jensen sprang to attention. Her brace shone fiercely as she grinned.

Simmons moved his human hand form his face and plucked at his stalled wires instead. “I don’t -- I mean I guess I do, but --”

“I could do it!” She fidgeted with nervous energy. “Is it body powered? Neuronal? Oh, I bet your suit does re-innervation! It does, doesn’t it?” Her voice grew more high pitched and feverish with each suggestion.

Simmons turned slightly to shield his arm from view. “I don’t really like -- I only let Grif mess with that. Caboose sometimes. They need to play around with my ball joints or something.” He said in reference to the bullet nick from earlier. He tried to flex his fingers, but there was only a creak in response.

“Oh! I’d _love_ to play with your balls!”

Their eyes met. It took a nanosecond before the double entendre became clear to her. He opened his mouth once, only to close it again when nothing came out. He searched his mind for something reasonable to say, some funny joke he could say to be cool like Tucker, or maybe shrug it off like Grif. Instead, his surprise answered for him. “Wait. _What?”_

Jensen threw her hand over her mouth. “That’s not what I meant!” Her cheeks turned as red as her hair. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. 

“Uhh-,“ He couldn’t will his lips to make more than a gurgle. “I-.“

Neither Jensen nor Simmons spoke. It was Palomo’s annoying squeak that added to the awkwardness. “Uhh….. guys?”

Suddenly, Simmons understood Tucker’s insistent dislike of the kid. He closed his eyes and forced a hiss through his teeth. “Palomo, don’t --” 

Palomo persisted. “Guys..”

“Oh my god, _Charlie!”_ Jensen kept her good arm to her head as if to block out the embarrassment. “I can’t believe I said that-”

“Seriously, guys!”

“What _is it, Palomo?”_ Simmons kept his mouth tight.

“Caboose is in the ER.” The words were delivered as if a casual pleasantry. Palomo just shrugged and jammed his hands into his pockets. “He’s going into sepsis or something. Figured you’d want to know.”


End file.
